The issue dates back to October
The presence of the issue was first spotted in October 2020 by several security researchers and later the developers of the apps realized that their security tools weren’t able to inspect the traffic of these apps nor were able to filter these apps.
As per ZDNet, security researchers such as Patrick Wardle among others were the first ones to point out this issue and that it was a disaster waiting to happen. The researchers argued that the malware could latch on to legitimate Apple apps present in the list and then bypass the security tools and firewalls easily.